


The Woman in the Refrigerator

by incapricious



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Multi, Threesome - F/M/M, scientifically implausible, self!cest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-29
Updated: 2011-06-29
Packaged: 2017-10-20 20:12:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/216672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/incapricious/pseuds/incapricious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which a female Sherlock Holmes from a parallel universe comes to visit 221B Baker Street via an inter-dimensional portal in the refrigerator.  What happens next may or may not involve 6 hour lectures about feminism (which John sleeps through), self!cest in the name of science, threesomes in the name of... sure, let's say science also, and surprising revelations about love and destiny (or the lack thereof).</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Woman in the Refrigerator

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt at sherlockbbc-fic.

"Oops."

John looked up from the Sunday paper to see Sherlock standing in front of the open refrigerator.

"What was that?"

"Nothing," said Sherlock, swiftly slamming the refrigerator door. "Everything's fine."

"Can we have just one nice, relaxing Sunday morning without exploding eyeballs, leaking cartons of bile, or... whatever it is that made you say, 'oops' just now? If you were anyone else, I'd think you'd spilled the jam or something, but you -- you probably accidentally developed a lethal strain of bread mould and are one careless gust of wind away from decimating the human race."

Sherlock came into the room and sat carefully on the chair across from John. "Actually," he said, scrubbing one hand through his hair. "I seem to have accidentally created a portal to a parallel universe in our refrigerator."

John took a deep breath. "Sherlock, when was the last time you slept? Have you... taken anything recently?"

"I'm fine. I'm not hallucinating; I know what I saw."

"Right. Forgive my scepticism, but I find it hard to believe that even you would be able to recognize a portal to a parallel universe on sight, let alone create one-- hold on, did you say in the _refrigerator_?"

"Yes. I opened the door, and saw myself," Sherlock said, enunciating every word.

The beginnings of a tension headache started to creep across John's forehead. "Isn't it more likely that you created a mirror of some kind?"

"No, it was a female version of me. We don't look identical. Obviously. I don't have breasts, and my hair is shorter. Hence my deduction that it was a parallel universe."

"A female-- right." John pressed his lips together for a moment to stop himself from giggling. "So... you didn't actually see yourself."

"You're not listening, John. It was me, but as a woman."

"All right," John said, dropping the newspaper to the floor and standing up. "I'm going to go look into the refrigerator and see if there are any female versions of you hiding in there. But if there aren't, you need to agree to get more sleep and stop taking whatever it is you're taking."

"I'm not--"

"I don't want to know," said John, "unless you've overdosed or are in any sort of danger. Otherwise, just... stop."

He marched into the kitchen. This was ridiculous. Of all the things he'd dealt with since becoming Sherlock's flatmate, this had to be the most ridiculous--

He wrenched open the refrigerator door, feeling the cool air hit his face. There was the milk, nearly empty, and the wilting head of lettuce he had bought last week but then abandoned on discovering that the bottle of salad dressing housed not Zesty Italian, but a mixture of lymph, blood, and bits of skin.

"See, Sherlock, there's nothing here," called John, looking over his shoulder towards the sitting room. "Whatever you saw must have--"

There was a click and the unmistakable sound of the refrigerator door opening -- which was impossible, because it was already open. John tightened his grip on the top of the door, his breath catching in his throat. He turned his head slowly, his mind gibbering at him. That sound had been nothing. Maybe the milk had fallen over.

In the back of the refrigerator, where there should have been nothing but a back wall composed of plastic and stainless steel, there was a woman -- a woman with curly black hair and arrestingly pale blue eyes.

The woman was bent over and looking at John, her own hand holding open a refrigerator door that led into a kitchen that looked nothing like John and Sherlock's kitchen, and which by rights could not exist, since it occupied a space that was empty air suspended over the alley behind Baker Street.

"Sherlock!" called John.

The woman smirked. "Yes. Hello."

\--

Sherlock waited a minute before getting up, ignoring John's increasingly alarmed shouts. He wanted to make sure John learned his lesson: when Sherlock Holmes said there was a portal to a parallel universe in the refrigerator, one should not be surprised to find a portal to a parallel universe in the refrigerator.

Of course, there was the troubling matter of how he'd created the portal in the first place. He had no idea, but clearly he had, because a female version of him was on the other side and--

"Oh. Of course. _She_ did it."

By the time Sherlock got to the kitchen, John had removed three of the shelves and was working out the last one. A bag of lettuce, three pickle jars (none of which contained anything even remotely resembling pickles), and a carton of milk sat on the floor.

The female version of Sherlock pushed at the last shelf until it gave way. "Thanks," said John, pulling it free. "Um. Would you like to come in?" he asked once he'd set it gingerly on top of the others, as if this was an ordinary guest knocking at their front door and not a visitor from another dimension.

"How quaint," said the woman. "I think I would, thank you."

"Is your name also Sherlock?" Sherlock asked her as she stepped carefully out into their kitchen. He had so many questions -- may as well start with the basics.

"Is there some reason it shouldn't be?"

"Sherlock is a man's name."

"My parents were unconventional people."

"Yes, I know," said Sherlock. "They were mine too."

"There's no need to state the obvious."

"You started it."

"No, I believe that honour goes to you."

"Sherlock! I mean, Sherlocks! Oh, God," said John. "There are two of you. This is a nightmare. I can't call you both Sherlock."

The female Sherlock raised her eyebrows. Sherlock knew exactly what she meant. "Believe it or not, he's usually less of an idiot than most," he said in response.

She shrugged. "If you say so. You can call me Holmes if it makes things less confusing in your tiny little brain."

John made a vague choking noise.

"Holmes," Sherlock said, ignoring John's reddening face. "How did you achieve this? Are there really so few murders in your London that you can find the time to, to--"

"To bend the laws of physics to my whims?" Holmes said.

"Yes, precisely."

John coughed. "Hold on, she made the, the portal thing?"

"Of course she did."

"You said you'd made it."

"Did he, really?" Holmes asked, her eyes boring into Sherlock's like she was trying to delve into his mind. "Typical."

"I may have jumped to an erroneous conclusion in my surprise, but I quickly worked out the correct answer once I thought it through."

"Of course. He didn't even know that the Earth went round the sun until I told him, how could he possibly know how to make a hole in the fabric of space-time?" said John.

"And if I were to recite the list of things you don't know on a daily basis, I would do nothing else. I would in fact starve to death because I would be so busy talking that I wouldn't have time to eat."

"I must have made a miscalculation," said Holmes, frowning. "This can't be-- wait. You said murders. Why did you say murders? Oh! You absolute bastard. You're a man, so you're a detective inspector, not a physicist."

"Close. I'm a consulting detective."

"What... what does being a man have to do with not being a physicist?" asked John.

"Everything. Look at me."

John looked, and Sherlock joined him, taking in the pronounced cheekbones, the thick, dark curly hair, and the pale blue-green of her eyes. Her nose was slightly large for her face, but her lips were full and pink, like his. He scanned down her body: long legs, narrow waist, slight curve to the hips, small but well-shaped breasts.

"Gorgeous," said John, a little breathlessly. Sherlock smirked. Sometimes John was so ordinary, so--

Holmes nodded. "Exactly."

Sherlock blinked. "So?" He must have missed some important piece of data. He didn't see why her being an attractive woman would mean she was a physicist and not a consulting detective. Granted, women and men had different hormones, different chemistry, which would result in some differences in personality, in temperament, but aside from an X rather than a Y, they had the same genes, the same upbringing. Their parents wouldn't have treated a girl any differently -- if Father had tried, Mummy would have had his hide.

They should be drawn to the same things. Although it was possible there was something in their chemical differences that made her less apt at the logical thinking required for the job.

A test then: "Carl Powers," Sherlock said, and a shadow flitted across Holmes' eyes. Interesting. "Yes. They didn't listen to me either. They said I was just a boy, I couldn't possibly--" Holmes grimaced and Sherlock's mind raced. "That's not what they said to you. Why? I don't understand. Because you were a girl? Because you were a pretty girl? So what? I was a pretty boy. Did you get something wrong? Did you make an obvious mistake? Why?"

"Sherlock," John said. Sherlock shook his head, frustrated. He was still missing something.

"Girls enter puberty before boys, generally."

"Yes, thank you, Doctor Watson, I don't think we need a lesson on basic human physiology right now--" began Sherlock, and then he remembered.

Detective Inspector Jones had been in charge of the case. He'd barely glanced at Sherlock, a gangly boy with spots and a breaking voice, waving a notebook. "Run along home, lad," he'd said. "This is men's work."

Men's work. With the implication that even though he was too young now, someday he wouldn't be. "But surely one sexist detective wouldn't be enough to deter you, if you had the ability. You gave up."

Holmes laughed bitterly. "It wasn't just one detective. When I was sixteen I solved the Petersen murder."

"As did I."

"Did they believe you?"

"Of course, I had the evidence."

"So did I. They took my notebook, patted me on the arm and told me I was a clever girl. Sergeant Clark pinched my arse as he showed me to the door. Then they arrested the brother."

"But it wasn't the brother! It was the gardener!"

"I know that, Sherlock!" Holmes shouted.

"Then what? The Archer kidnapping..."

She shook her head. "The bus driver, I know. But by then I'd discovered physics."

"Boring," said Sherlock. "Energy and motion, what does that matter? It's only valuable when it's applied -- ballistics, blood splatter, the force required to fracture a human femur... you obviously have the mental faculties required--"

"Not Newtonian physics, you idiot. Quantum physics. The very nature of reality is there for the understanding."

"And where does that get you?"

"Well, here, obviously."

Sherlock had to admit she had a point. But he still didn't understand. "Why didn't they believe you when you had the evidence?"

Holmes steepled her hands under her chin. "I should have expected this. Come along," she said, taking him by the arm and dragging him towards the sitting room. "We need to talk."

Sherlock allowed himself to be towed into the next room. He wanted to understand. "What about?"

"Patriarchy. Privilege. Feminism. John, you can join us too," she added over her shoulder.

"Ugh. Dull."

"Not to me," Homes said, gesturing at the couch. "Sit."

Sherlock crossed his arms. There was no need for her to be so bossy. "I'll give you an hour. After that, you'll give me a blood sample to analyse."

"Fine."

Sherlock sat down next to John, who was already on the couch, watching Holmes with rapt attention.

\--

John woke with a start, finding himself alone on the couch. He squinted at his watch. There was barely enough light filtering in through the glass of the kitchen doors to see it, but apparently it was just past one in the morning. From what John remembered before he had drifted off to sleep, Sherlock had collected a blood sample, a hair sample, and a sliver of Holmes' toenail in exchange for three hours of listening to her talk.

It had still been light out then -- what had happened in the meantime? And what had woken him up, anyway?

"Because you still sound like a misogynistic little fuckweasel, that's why!" Holmes yelled from somewhere in the kitchen, her voice carrying a tinge of what John would describe as contemptuous amusement.

Ah. Shouting. That was it.

Sherlock's response was too quiet for John to understand -- all he could hear was the soft rumble of Sherlock's voice.

"It doesn't work like that. Think about it, Sherlock. Really think. Am I better able to objectively determine what it's like to be a consulting detective, since I'm not one? Is that logical?"

Sherlock said something terse in response -- it sounded a little bit like 'no'.

"Exactly. So why would you possibly be--"

"Yes, fine! I concede your point! You are correct. I was wrong," said Sherlock, finally speaking loud enough for John to hear.

Holmes laughed, dry and sardonic. "Suddenly I believe in miracles. Hallelujah! And in only six hours, too; that has to be a record. Usually miracles take longer than that," she said, her voice oddly muffled for a few seconds.

John got up off the couch and padded softly in his socks over towards the kitchen (someone had removed his shoes -- probably Sherlock). "Did you just say you were wrong?" he asked as he slid the door open.

At least that was what he intended to say. Instead, he said, "Did you just-- oh my God what are you doing?"

Holmes was naked, or nearly so. Her top was off, as well as her bra -- her nipples were the same colour as her lips, so pink, so pink -- and she was pulling down her trousers and either wasn't wearing underpants (John felt slightly dizzy) or had pulled them down at the same time and--

Sherlock was looking at her. Sherlock was touching her.

"There are some things that can't be determined through hair and blood and saliva samples," Sherlock said.

Holmes was looking down at Sherlock's hand. "I still maintain the conclusion is so obvious that we don't even need to do the experiment," she said.

"But, isn't that..." John began, still stuck on the naked female Sherlock Holmes part of whatever experiment they were conducting.

"What?" Sherlock asked, looking sharply over at John, one hand still pressed to Holmes' ribcage just under her left breast. God, those nipples...

"It's like she's your twin sister. You shouldn't be touching her like that."

"Incorrect," said Sherlock and Holmes at the same time. Then they both chuckled. At the same time. The only difference was the pitch of the voice doing the chuckling.

John looked up at the ceiling. Too much, too much. (There was a bit of something grey and feathery on the ceiling. Had it been flung there, or had it grown? He shook his head. Sherlock was in the kitchen feeling up his female doppelganger and John was wondering if there was mould on the ceiling. He'd been spending too much time with Sherlock.)

"She is me."

"And I am him."

"It's really more like touching myself," added Sherlock. Holmes inhaled sharply, and John, against his better judgment, let his glance drift down from the ceiling.

Sherlock was cupping Holmes' left breast, fingers cradled beneath it, thumb roaming over the nipple. He was watching her intently. "Oh," he said, "yes."

"Well, as I said, it's obvious," she replied, and then leaned forward and kissed him.

\--

To Sherlock, kissing had always seemed pointless. There was very little he could learn about someone by kissing them that he couldn't learn from a simple dental examination, and direct genital contact provided much more direct stimulation of his brain's pleasure centres, if that was what he was after (which he usually wasn't). Add to that the risk of contracting oral herpes, mononucleosis, or even the common cold, and it became obvious that kissing should be done only as a last resort.

Certainly, he had kissed his fair share of people in his younger days. The kissing tended to lead to fucking, which was all well and good, but the fucking tended to lead to the expectation of mutually shared (and, even more horribly: expressed) feelings, which inevitably ended in Sherlock being called a cold-hearted bastard and having a brick lobbed through his bedroom window.

Which was why it was something he rarely did, or even thought of.

Kissing Holmes was actually interesting though. Not because he could tell she had drunk coffee within the last hour (black, two sugars, naturally) or that she had never had any cavities, but rather because of the kissing itself. Despite their obvious differences, they both seemed to respond to the exact same kind of kissing (slow, languid, moderate use of tongue, sparing with the teeth, lips doing most of the work, eyes wide open) which meant that Sherlock was beginning to experience the kind of pleasure he normally associated with a hand job at the very least.

He felt Holmes undoing his shirt, long slender fingers sliding deftly over the buttons, and then dropping without pause to the top of his trousers. Within a few moments she had pushed his trousers down, and the shirt off, and he was just as naked as she was, save for the clothing bunched around his ankles. And still the kissing continued.

By the temperature of Holmes' skin, the dilation of her pupils, the hardness of her nipple under Sherlock's thumb, and the way her breathing was coming out in gusts through her nose, Sherlock could tell that she was feeling much the same way he was. If he looked down, he would probably observe that both of them had splotches of red beginning to form on their chests -- something Sherlock's past lovers had used as a sort of arousal barometer to compensate for what they called his frustrating lack of verbal feedback, but what was actually their ignorance of basic physiology.

Sherlock moved his hands to either side of Holmes' head and pulled his face back, her own coming into focus. "Is this normal for you?" he asked.

"Of course not."

"So, usually you find kissing to be--"

"Generally pointless and tedious, yes."

"But not now."

"Masturbation has always been preferable--"

"--to having sex with another person, yes," finished Sherlock. "That's true."

"Hold on," said John. Sherlock had forgotten John was there. Watching.

"What?"

"That doesn't make any sense."

"Why not?"

"Because when you masturbate -- I mean when anyone masturbates, not you in particular -- you're touching yourself, and--"

"Did you really interrupt our conversation to announce the definition of masturbation?"

Holmes chuckled appreciatively and Sherlock grinned, pleased.

"No," said John, getting that look that meant he thought Sherlock was being an idiot, when clearly John was being the idiot, "it's just if you're touching yourself, there's a... a closed feedback loop. Your hand and your-- your whatever genitals you happen to have. Kissing your mirror-universe-equivalent is nothing like masturbation. You can't feel what she feels. It's still someone else's hand or lips, or..."

"And yet--" Sherlock said at the same time that Holmes said, "Well, then--"

Sherlock nodded his head at Holmes. "Go on."

"You didn't say 'Ladies first' -- I'm so proud," said Holmes. "Well, then, John, do you have another explanation for what's occurring? Why is it that both of us experience kissing each other to be much more pleasurable than kissing other people?"

John shook his head and looked at the ceiling for a few moments. "Seriously? Neither one of you gets it. The two smartest people on the planet and..." He looked from Sherlock to Holmes, a ridiculous grin on his face. "It's because you're both bloody fit. I mean... have you looked at yourselves? Because I'm looking at you, and you both have perfect, beautiful-- well, you know." John's grin abruptly fell. "From an aesthetic point of view, and a... a cultural point of view. So that's probably why. I mean. Maybe."

"My dear Sherlock, I do believe John wants to join us," said Holmes.

John's eyes widened. "No, no, that's not what I-- no, I was just saying--"

But she was right -- it was clear from John's face and posture that he was desperately turned on, and fighting it. Every time his glance wandered to Holmes (breasts mainly, but also the dark patch of her pubic hair and the curve of her buttocks) or Sherlock (face, neck, and cock in equal measure) he would look away quickly, casting frantically about the room for something else to hold his attention, but within a few seconds, finding nothing, he would be back on them like a fly on a rotting carcass.

It would be an interesting experiment -- could the pleasure be maintained with the introduction of a third person? John was very dear to Sherlock, so perhaps it would even be increased, although that was an unlikely outcome. Still, there were too many variables for a simple thought experiment. An experiential approach was clearly called for.

He looked over at Holmes, quirking his eyebrows. She gave a small nod. That was settled, then.

"It's fine, John," said Sherlock, holding out his hand. "Come on."

John took a deep shuddering breath and stepped towards them.

\--

They were beautiful together, and the part of John's brain that had been squawking about the perils of incest (it didn't matter what the Sherlocks said -- they had nearly identical genes) seemed to have either been strangled by his libido, or else taken a second look and decided that actually, in this case, incest was rather sexy.

John took another step forward, toward Sherlock's outstretched hand, and then stopped. "Actually," he said, "I'd like you two to continue what you were doing, if you don't mind."

Holmes and Sherlock exchanged a quick, amused glance; John had the feeling he had just revealed a bit too much about himself.

"Your John is something of a voyeur," Holmes said.

"Apparently," Sherlock answered.

John really didn't want to upset the delicate balance of emotions that he had stacked up inside his head in precisely the right way to make him okay with watching his flatmate make out with a woman who was effectively his twin sister. "Yes, yes," he said, "so what? There's nothing wrong with that."

The Sherlocks seemed to agree, because they shrugged, still wearing small grins that John couldn't quite interpret, and began to kiss again. John spent a good while admiring the way their lips met, the way their tongues intertwined, the way their hands roamed the curves and planes of each others' bodies. Then he noticed something.

It was a bit weird, considering how much kissing they had done, that they hadn't progressed to more -- their bodies were still a good six inches apart, and even though Sherlock had a substantial erection, he hadn't made any attempt to touch Holmes with it, or touch it himself. Maybe they both liked to take things slow.

But after five more minutes of lips and tongues and moans (oh God, the moans -- John stored them up in his memory for later use), John started to feel a little impatient. He stepped forward a few more feet, until he was standing right next to them, close enough to feel their body heat radiating towards him.

To John's surprise, Sherlock responded to this by taking one hand off of Holmes and putting it on John's arm, just above the elbow. John barely had time to process this new development before Sherlock's hand slid over until it rested on John's chest, just above his heart.

"Sherlock, what--?"

"Just checking," Sherlock murmured against Holmes' lips.

"Checking for what, exactly?"

"Oh shut up, the both of you," said Holmes, taking one of her hands and putting it on John's hip.

John did as he was told and continued to watch, his whole body raging with desire. God, he was really turned on. This was brilliant. The kissing became more intense -- faster, more tongue, mouths wide open and--

Sherlock pulled back, eyes wide. "This is unexpected."

Holmes frowned. "Is it?"

"Oh, I see. You think he's functioning as a conduit of sorts?"

They both took their hands off of John and turned to him with the same serious expression on their faces.

"Is this normal?"

John laughed. "I can't think of anything about this that's normal, no."

"No," said Sherlock, "I mean is it normal when two people are involved in a sexual situation, for the addition of a third person to make everything... feel even better?"

John blinked a few times, wondering why exactly his flatmate assumed he was some sort of expert on threesomes. Although perhaps he should consider it a compliment. "Sherlock, I have no idea."

"You've never done this before?"

"No! Well... I mean not really."

"How does one 'not really' have sex with two other people at the same time?" asked Holmes.

"I mean no, I haven't."

Sherlock and Holmes raised their eyebrows.

John sighed. He didn't particularly want to tell this story, but with two Sherlocks watching his every blink, breath, and involuntary twitch, they would probably have it out of him in under a minute even if he didn't say a word.

"All right, fine. When I was sixteen, I had this girlfriend called Pamela, and she had the idea of her best friend joining us. It sounded like a great idea to me, but..."

"You couldn't perform adequately?"

"What? No! For God's sake, I was a sixteen-year-old boy, of course I could... no, it just... it turned out they were more interested in each other than in me. Which is fine... I'm glad they sorted it out, you know, but mostly all I did was sit on the bed. And watch."

"But you like to watch," Sherlock said, and for a moment John thought he was mocking him, but no, his face held nothing but mild confusion.

"Right, but it doesn't quite count as an actual threesome when all you're doing is encouragingly rubbing your girlfriend's back while she has what she will later tell you, just before she breaks up with you, is her first real orgasm."

"No?"

"Yeah, no, it really doesn't. So, I guess neither of you has any experience in this area either? No, of course not, dumb question. What about theory? You must have theories."

"I do," said Holmes, "three so far. But to test them, we're going to need a softer surface."

John liked the sound of that. "We do have two fine beds to choose from."

She looked at Sherlock, who nodded. "Sofa."

\--

"Oh, yes," moaned Sherlock as Holmes' mouth closed around his cock, her lips quite close to the base.

Of course she could suppress her gag reflex just as well as Sherlock. It wasn't a surprising fact; having voluntary control over a normally involuntary muscular contraction was a useful skill for a variety of reasons, with deep throating during oral sex being fourth or perhaps fifth on the list. First was, of course, the ability to avoid asphyxiation after accidental inhalation of a small foreign object. Sherlock had seen the corpse of more than one person who had died after their gag reflex kicked in for something as small as a wayward kernel of corn, effectively suffocated by their own throats.

Sherlock was sitting on the couch, back against one of the armrests, legs splayed out in front of him, with Holmes kneeling between them, arse in the air in a classic example of mammalian lordosis. The arch of her back was quite beautiful. Behind her, John was caressing her buttocks, eyes fixed on her vaginal entrance, presumably, although Sherlock couldn't be sure. Maybe he had an anal fixation; it wasn't beyond the realm of possibility.

John's hand moved lower, beyond Sherlock's view. He must have grazed over Holmes' vulva or maybe her clitoris, because Holmes twitched, sucking hard on Sherlock's cock and pulling back, forcing her tongue over the head of his penis as he slid out of her throat.

"Oh, do that again, John," said Sherlock. "That was good."

John laughed and did something that made Holmes moan, the noise sending vibrations through Sherlock's body.

Sherlock took a long shuddering breath. "Oh, yes."

"Can I fuck you?"

"Maybe later," Sherlock said.

"Um. The other Sherlock," John said. Sherlock looked down at Holmes, who nodded a little, mouth still stretched around his cock, moving only slightly up and down its length.

"That's a yes," translated Sherlock.

John breathed out and then leaned over to fish in the pockets of his jeans, which were in a crumpled heap on the floor. He pulled out his wallet, opened it, and extracted a condom packet. "You're not allergic to latex, are you?" he asked as he ripped it open.

Holmes made an odd sound -- Sherlock saw the corners of her eyes crinkle and realized she was laughing.

"We're not, no," Sherlock said. "You've seen me wear latex gloves in the lab hundreds of times."

John frowned, rolling the condom onto his penis. "I'm a little rusty on the subject, but I didn't think that's how allergies worked. The immune system is random."

"Of course," said Sherlock, as Holmes started sliding her mouth along his cock with longer strokes. "If... oh, lovely... if she were my twin sister you... God, your tongue... would be right to ask, but she's my... yes. Oh," Sherlock moaned, feeling the wheels inside his mind slowing, as the sensations stemming from his cock began to spread through his body in earnest. What had he been talking about? "She's... oh, yes..."

Then John thrust into Holmes, and her whole body moved forward, pushing Sherlock deeper down her throat.

"Oh God," said John. "You're so... Jesus Christ..." His hands gripped her waist and pulled her towards him, his eyes fluttering closed. His mouth hung open.

After a few seconds they fell into a rhythm, Holmes sucking in time with John's thrusts. It was astonishingly pleasurable, the sensations seeming to magnify with their movements. Sherlock didn't know how long they continued this way, sliding together like three parts in a well-oiled mechanism. Time seemed to stretch around them.

He looked down at Holmes, the rhythm of sex flowing through him. He slid his fingers into her hair, feeling the familiar texture of his own. "Oh, yes, Sherlock," he moaned when her tongue did something especially devious.

John made a guttural sort of sound and sped up his thrusts, the skin of his hips slapping against Holmes' thighs and buttocks. Holmes groaned and pushed back against him, her mouth moving more erratically on Sherlock.

She stilled for a second, her tongue fluttering against the underside of Sherlock's cock. Then she started to push back against John, hard. She moaned, over and over, the pitch going higher and higher.

"Oh God," said John, and Sherlock concluded that Holmes was orgasming, and John was feeling the contractions of her vagina very keenly. "She's... oh my God."

"Yes," agreed Sherlock, as Holmes resumed sucking at him, her movement fluid, the rhythm picking up again to coincide with John.

"Ah, ah, God," said John, thrusting harder and faster. He looked at Sherlock and said, "I'm... I'm coming, oh my God."

Sherlock smiled and watched John fall apart.

After John had finished and pulled out, collapsing back onto the other end of the sofa, Holmes sat up, mouth sliding off of Sherlock.

"I suppose if I could only have one orgasm before a non-trivial refractory period, I'd have stamina like yours too," she said, sitting back on her heels.

Sherlock rubbed at his cock with his hand. He was very hard and still very aroused. "John," he said.

"Hmm?" John said, sitting up a bit.

"As I was saying, if she were my twin sister, you'd be correct in not assuming that she and I shared the same allergies, since the immune system is indeed formed partly by random chance and the environment. Twins aren't always allergic to the same things. But she is my counterpart in another universe. By definition, we are the same, physically, save for our sex chromosomes."

"Come on," said John. "There's no formal definition of alternate-universe counterparts. If there are an infinite number of universes, one of them has to contain a Sherlock Holmes who's nothing like you."

"But then it wouldn't be Sherlock Holmes, just someone with my name. With our name," Sherlock amended, nodding at Holmes.

"You're both wrong," Holmes said. "My calculations were meant to find the universe that was the most similar to my own, with only a tiny difference. But it turned out to be a... time-consuming process. I might have died of old age before finding it. So I set a similarity threshold and once I found a universe that surpassed that, I... opened the door, hoping to find the one I was looking for."

"You were looking for a male version of yourself?" asked John.

Sherlock shook his head. "This isn't the right universe."

"No," agreed Holmes. "It's not."

"So why did you... why did you even come in?"

Holmes looked at John and shrugged. "I keep finding the wrong universe. I was frustrated. I thought maybe if I looked around, figured out what differences there were and how to exclude them..."

"You could modify your calculations to arrive at a universe closer to what you're looking for," finished Sherlock, still lazily fisting his cock, keeping his arousal steady.

"Precisely."

"My God, are you ever going to come?" asked John.

"Oh, if you insist," Sherlock said, contracting his pelvic floor muscles and speeding up his hand to the pace he knew would get him off the fastest. A few strokes later, he felt a familiar contraction in his testicles, and heat start to climb up his cock. He put his other hand up to catch his semen seconds before his orgasm poured out of him.

He slowed his hand and took a deep breath. His whole body felt tingly and relaxed. Lovely. He leaned over and wiped his hand on John's shirt.

"Happy now?"

John chuckled and shook his head. "You're incredible," he said.

"I suppose there's no need to test my other two theories," said Holmes.

"No, I think not," replied Sherlock. "So tell us: what did you lose, and why are you digging through parallel universes to find it?"

\--

"It's irrelevant. It's not here, I'm sure of it," Holmes said yet again, pulling on her clothing, which she had fetched from the kitchen.

Sherlock made a frustrated sound. He remained naked, and apparently unconcerned with that fact, so focused was he on getting information out of Holmes. "Answer. The. Question. What are you looking for?"

Holmes sat back down on the couch between Sherlock and John. "Irrelevant."

John had dressed himself at least twenty minutes ago, and had spent the time since then listening to the same conversation repeat itself in an endless loop. "Okay, girls, that's enough arguing," he said finally, grinning ruefully at the combined stubbornness of two Sherlocks.

Holmes snapped her head around to look at John, brows drawn. "Excuse me?"

"Well, I just meant..." started John, and then didn't know how to finish the sentence.

"You just meant what? That we were being silly and pointless and needed to stop talking, which is why you called us girls, because girls are silly and pointless and shouldn't talk?"

"No," John said, shaking his head. "Definitely not that."

"Seriously, John," said Sherlock, "using feminine terms to belittle men is a direct reflection of the patriarchy's positioning of women as inferior to men, reinforcing the deeply ingrained misogyny in our society, encouraging the oppression of women, as well as forcing men to rigorously police their own gender performance lest they slip up and do something as awful as act 'like a girl'. And there's also the effect on those who don't fit into the confines of the gender binary, who get squeezed from both sides of that particularly unforgiving construct."

John gaped at Sherlock. He had only vaguely understood half of that; the rest had been gibberish. "What?"

"You were asleep for a while. Don't worry, I'll catch you up later."

"I'm gratified to see your earlier declaration of understanding wasn't a false one made in order to extract further data from me," said Holmes.

Sherlock looked offended. "I would never pretend to agree with something for my own-- well, no, that's not true. I often do. But I wouldn't with you. Either of you," added Sherlock, looking at John as well.

"Do you know a Detective Inspector called Lestrade?" Holmes asked after a small pause.

"Of course. I work with him often to solve--" Sherlock stopped and focused on Holmes' face. "Lestrade? You're looking for Lestrade?"

John was confused. Again. "Wait, what?"

Holmes launched herself to her feet and faced John and Sherlock. "What? He's alive and here? That shouldn't be possible, not unless you'd-- oh. Damn." She rolled her eyes. "I'm an idiot. John, I'd forgotten to account for you."

"Not a mistake people make more than once," said Sherlock. John smiled involuntarily at the note of pride in Sherlock's voice. "Why are you looking for Lestrade?"

John watched emotions flash across Holmes' face -- only faintly, but he had learned how to read Sherlock, and reading her wasn't much different -- and felt his heart break in sympathy.

"Oh. I'm sorry," he said softly. "What happened to him? Your Lestrade, I mean."

"He was murdered."

"So... you need our Lestrade to solve the case for you? Why? You should be more than capable of solving it yourself, more so than any Detective Inspector." The scorn in Sherlock's words made John wince.

"Sherlock, no," he said quietly. "It's not that. She loved him."

"Loves," Holmes corrected. "Present tense."

Sherlock clasped his hands under his chin and frowned, as if he was trying to get the equation that was Holmes to change into something solvable. "Is this... is this because you're a woman?"

Holmes laughed bitterly. "No, Sherlock."

"But, love. That's not like us."

"No, it's certainly not. And yet here we are."

"I don't understand."

Holmes glanced briefly at John, almost apologetically. "If John was taken away from you, what would you do to get him back?"

Sherlock looked at John for a long time, and John looked back, watching Sherlock puzzle it out, both awaiting and fearing the conclusion he would reach. "Anything," he finally said and then gave John a small wistful smile.

John exhaled raggedly. Sherlock had just admitted-- well, John wasn't sure, but it seemed big and important, and a little overwhelming. He could never be worth that kind of devotion, he didn't think, but he could certainly spend the rest of his life trying.

"So you understand."

"No," said Sherlock, frowning again. "Well, yes, I understand why you're looking for him now, but not your methodology. Why didn't you simply, let's say, pop open the fridge door and ask if Lestrade was around? Instead you spent six and a half hours lecturing me on feminist theory, and then when that was done, you deep-throated me while my flatmate fucked you. Not exactly the actions of a grieving lover."

"Sherlock, for Christ's sake," said John, thrown back into the abrasive reality of Sherlock's personality, "could you try to be a little less callous?"

Holmes shook her head. "No, it's a fair question. I wouldn't classify myself as a grieving lover, Sherlock. Grief can only be sustained for so long. His murderer is already behind bars. It's been five years since he was killed, and three years since I started looking for him in other realities, since mine no longer contains him. I miss him, and I do love him, but it takes a not-inconsiderable amount of time and energy to open a portal. I've spent many hours alone making calculations, creating the portals, getting them open. Once I was here..." She shrugged. "I thought I might as well stay for a bit and find something fun to do."

John understood, then, all of a sudden. He wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. "Of course. My God, the pair of you! When he gets bored, you know, sometimes he nicks spare body parts from the morgue and drops them off of bridges in the dead of night, so he can dance with glee when the police swarm around the remains after they wash ashore. And you... when you get bored, you go to parallel universes and have sex with yourself."

"I didn't come here because I was bored," said Holmes sharply. "I stayed because I was bored. There's a difference."

"And I drop body parts off of bridges to gather data about the types of trace evidence that can still be detected by the police after a swim in the Thames."

John levelled a look at Sherlock.

"Fine, and because I'm bored," Sherlock added. "By the way, what made you conclude that Lestrade wasn't in this universe?"

"Because I could tell you were in love with John."

John wanted to protest or to laugh or maybe do both at the same time, even though her claim made perfect sense, considering what Sherlock had said earlier, and how Sherlock acted, and, come to think of it, how he looked at John sometimes. But no, surely he loved John, but in love with John? Not Sherlock.

Except Holmes sounded so certain, and if she was right, and John laughed, how would that make Sherlock feel? He claimed that nothing hurt him, but John had seen the flashes of pain, covered up quickly but not quickly enough for John, when the world attacked him for being different.

Another question: if she was right, how did that make John feel?

But John didn't really have to ask, because he already knew the answer: happy. It made him feel happy.

John smiled, and then Sherlock said, "Your premise is erroneous."

Well. Never mind. John crossed his arms, his stomach clenching.

"So I have discovered," replied Holmes. "But if it wasn't, my conclusion would be correct."

"Not necessarily. Perhaps I just hadn't met him."

"Really? You a renowned consulting detective in London, not meeting the best DI on the force?"

"It is improbable," Sherlock said with a wave of his hand, "but not impossible. You should have asked."

"I've asked the question hundreds of times. I could tell. Or so I thought."

"But you were wrong."

"Yes. It does happen occasionally."

Sherlock smiled. "Very occasionally." He turned to John. "What do you think? Is it time to take a field trip to Scotland Yard? This will be fun!"

"Do what you like, I'm going to stay here, I think," said John, shrugging in a manner he hoped was nonchalant.

"You're upset. Why are you upset?"

Sherlock and Holmes shared a look. John wanted them both to go away.

"I'm not upset, I'm just done with this entire conversation."

"But you weren't before. You were amused. You were laughing. You-- ah." Sherlock ran his hand through his hair. "John, you misunderstood me."

"Oh? Did I?"

"The erroneous premise I referred to was not -- it wasn't that I don't love you, it was that love is destined. Just because I love you doesn't mean we're soul mates."

John struggled for a second to figure out what to say. Before he could work it out, though, Sherlock continued speaking.

"Holmes believed that if Lestrade existed in this universe, and if he and I had met, then I would be in love with him, because she is unable to imagine not loving him. And given that she could easily deduce my deep affection for you, and also knew that I was a detective who worked closely with the police, she concluded that Lestrade couldn't possibly exist in the form she was searching for."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"It makes some sense," said Holmes, a little defensively.

John shook his head. "But so many different things happen in life just by chance. You never know who you'll meet, or who you'll miss despite living next door to one another. I don't think you can possibly say that you and Lestrade, or any two people, would always be in love in any universe."

Sherlock beamed. "Exactly."

"I didn't say in every universe," said Holmes, "but as I said earlier, I only check those with minor differences. Given that I picked this universe for our similarity to one another, it's not outrageous to assume--"

"Although, actually," said John, interrupting before the thought escaped him, "it's hard for me to imaging being me and not-- not feeling the way I do about Sherlock. Um." John belatedly realised he was saying more than he wanted. But it seemed important. "I mean in some ways, if I met Sherlock and didn't have... if I didn't love him --" there, he'd said it "-- then it wouldn't really be me, at least not this me."

"Precisely," said Holmes. "If we are so identical, why are we so different in our affections? It's not logical."

Sherlock tapped his lips with his fingertip. "Good question."

"Um. You're really not that identical. I mean, you are very, eerily similar in some ways, but, well, you're a man and she's a woman. You have different jobs. Maybe Sherlock's relationship with Lestrade is one of professional respect, or maybe Lestrade is straight, or maybe... I don't know, there are loads of possibilities."

Sherlock made a thoughtful face. "When I met Lestrade for the first time, I was addicted to cocaine and only kept out of prison by my brother's influence. It wasn't exactly a situation conducive to any kind of love, romantic or otherwise. But I can certainly imagine other circumstances where that would be different. He is quite attractive, and reasonably intelligent, and has a certain rugged practicality I find appealing."

Holmes gaped. "Brother? You have a brother?"

"Of course. Mycroft. Don't you?"

"No. I don't. I'm an only child."

"Oh," said Sherlock.

"That explains it."

"It does. Quite so."

"I need to adjust the coefficients... perhaps in the tesseract creation module," muttered Holmes.

Sherlock shrugged. "Not my field."

"No, I wasn't talking to you, obviously. Well, there's time for that later. I'd like to go to Scotland Yard now."

"Wait. First, I have a question," said John. "What are you going to do with Lestrade? You're not going to take him with you, are you? Are you planning on staying here?"

"No, of course not. I'm just going to borrow him so I can... copy him. I'll bring him back unharmed, I swear."

"You're going to clone him?" asked John.

"No, because then I would have an embryo with Lestrade's genome and that really isn't what I'm after. I told you, I'm going to copy him. Duplicate him down to the spin of his quarks."

John nodded vaguely. "Ah. Quarks. That's good."

"Can you copy anybody?" asked Sherlock.

"Please, for the love of God, say no, whatever the real answer is."

"I can in theory, but I won't," she said instead. "It always... ends badly."

Sherlock looked forlorn. "Ah well," he said after a moment, "it might have been more trouble than it was worth, anyway."

John decided he didn't want to know. All he could imagine was hundreds of Sherlocks running around London, interrogating passersby, and that was terrifying enough.

"So," said Sherlock, clapping his hands together, nefarious plans about clone armies apparently forgotten. "Let's go pay a visit to our favourite DI. "

"Excellent," said Holmes.

Sherlock stood and offered his hand to John. "John?"

"I wouldn't miss it," said John, grabbing hold and pulling himself up. "But one small thing before we go."

"Of course. You have another question?"

"No, more of a statement, really, and it's this: it's one thing to parade into Scotland Yard with a female version of yourself from a parallel universe intending to kidnap -- sorry, borrow -- a Detective Inspector so she can duplicate him, but it's quite another to do so completely starkers."

Sherlock looked down at his naked body. "Oh. I should get dressed!"

"Yes, you really, really should."


End file.
